


Four Weddings & a Funeral

by ishafel



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-16
Updated: 2009-12-16
Packaged: 2017-10-04 11:43:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things that happened to the Blacks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Weddings & a Funeral

Bellatrix is married in the spring, when war is still a game for children and a nightmare for old men. She is married in the garden of her father's house in Sussex, in a white dress that was her mother's, attended by both of her sisters. Tom Riddle and Albus Dumbledore both dance at her wedding-- not together-- and most of wizarding Britain drinks her health with her father's champagne. The day is so perfect the photographs look like magazine advertisements: there is not a cloud in the sky, not a face that is not smiling as the bride throws her bouquet to her older sister.

 

Andromeda is married at midsummer, by a man wearing a bedsheet. None of her family is there or invited. Most of them would rather see her dead. But there are friends at her wedding, and her husband's family: smiling, long-haired children in flowing dresses, gauzy shirts and faded jeans. There is music. There is a homemade cake, and cheap beer and marijuana. There is war coming, dark on the horizon, dark as the news in the wizarding papers she does not read.

 

Narcissa is married in autumn, and even magic cannot disguise her body, seven months gone with child, or fit her rings onto her swollen fingers. She is married in a registry office in London, at the height of the war, to a man she does not think will survive it. Her parents are dead, and her sisters have given her up, and her husband and his friends have no time for dancing or drinking. It is raining when she steps out into the street and Apparates away, alone.

 

Sirius is married in winter, kneeling before the altar of a Muggle church, no rings, no priest, no vows: it is no true marriage in the eyes of God or government, but a thing done to salve his lover's conscience. A thing done because they will probably not live long enough to regret it. There is no one there to hear the words they say, and so they say nothing and mean everything, and go away afterward and tell no one. And the snow, falling, covers their footprints and buys them a day or two more of peace.

 

Regulus is buried in the spring, in the Black family crypt in Sussex, when the apple trees are flowering. Everyone at his funeral wears black, the black of mourning, uniform black. But his brother is not there, and his mother's eyes are dry: only his cousins cry for him. They are tired, all of them, tired of the smell of fresh-ploughed earth, the green flash of the Killing Curse, the empty words of funeral rites. They have been at war forever, and they are no closer to winning, and they are no longer sure what it is they believe. They want nothing more than to lie down under the trees to sleep, and wake to find that time has run backward and the world is new again.


End file.
